


the cold calculus of war

by orphan_account



Series: we are not now that strength [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Cohabitation, M/M, Past Brainwashing, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Psychological Trauma, except not because Steve's a genuinely good person, nobody scores, weird consent issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 12:32:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1469953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The mathematics of it don't make sense. You do not continue to sink costs into retrieving and repairing an irreparably broken asset. Not when more viable options are open to you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the cold calculus of war

From the Winter Soldier’s standpoint, Steve Rogers’ behavior does not make sense.

He expends a tremendous amount of time and energy on Bucky, even though the risk will probably never pay off for him. (The Soldier has explained to him, in his less lucid periods, that Bucky may have died in the fall, that the damage may be _permanent_ , that there are no guarantees that the memories he tries to recover are still there to be found…)

Steve Rogers doesn’t seem to care. He explicitly states that he doesn’t care that Bucky sleeps on his couch, eats his food, stays up all night padding silently through the apartment because his circadian rhythms are so fucked up that he effectively doesn’t even have them anymore, and every time he settles to sleep he wakes up with a strangled scream because there’s electricity closing in around his skull and ice creeping into his extremities.

Steve Rogers quietly agrees when Bucky asks not to be taken back to SHIELD, when he begins to tremble (unacceptable, _unacceptable, **unacceptable**_ ) at the thought of being strapped down in a medical lab and his brain picked apart, again. Steve Rogers accepts all of these intolerable failures and points of weakness with a strange look in his eyes, one that Bucky doesn’t know how to interpret, but he’s starting to put a name to it and that name is _pity_.

Bucky thinks he will do just about anything to not be pitied by this man.

He has started thinking of himself as Bucky, even in his head, because it’s easier to frame the terms of what’s happening to him as a mission. Recovering his memories and reshaping himself as the man in the Smithsonian is a clear objective he can align himself towards. He can zero in on the voice and the smile of the man in the black-and-white films. On good days when he makes a quiet deadpan remark and Steve laughs, warm and bright, he even thinks he has that target caught in his sights. If Agent Romanoff were around, he thinks she would understand - sometimes it’s the easiest thing in the world, to sink into the shape of what someone else wants you to be. Easier than figuring out what you want for yourself, anyway. But she’s vanished (somewhere in Europe, Steve says) and left him alone with a man for whom guileless honesty is like second nature.

Still, the mathematics of it don’t make sense. It’s not something Pierce would have ever done, and Pierce _valued_ him. ( _Your work has shaped the century._ ) You do not continue to sink costs into retrieving and repairing an irreparably broken asset. Not when more viable options are open to you.

It is a cold calculus, but it is the only way that the Winter Soldier knows how to understand other people.

It isn’t until the night that Steve Rogers holds his hand that he realizes.

It’s… not a good night. Or maybe it is. He half-wakes from a dream less awful than most, a distant memory of hunger mingling with much more recent memories of hunger, and can’t recall whether he was a teenaged boy on the streets of Brooklyn or an abandoned weapon living like a vagrant in the Mid-Atlantic.

When he wakes again, he’s not on the streets. He’s curled up on Steve’s pullout sofa bed, his belly is still comfortably full from last night’s meal, and Steve is there with one hand entwined with Bucky’s solitary flesh-and-blood one, a steady comforting warmth. To judge from the stiff angle of Steve’s neck and shoulders, the way he’s holding a book in his other hand, and the color of the predawn light trickling through the window, Steve’s been there for… hours, maybe. Just… holding Bucky’s hand while he slept.

Bucky stirs, moves to disentangle himself, and Steve smiles down at him and leans in to press a fond kiss to his forehead.

It’s obvious that Steve forgot himself. Doubtless he was thinking of some happier time, looking down at Bucky’s sleepy expression, and greeted him as he would have before the war and the long fall. A heartbeat later Steve realizes his mistake; he freezes like a startled deer, then hastily moves back, an apology already half-formed on his lips. But now the Winter Soldier understands what Bucky already suspected. Steve was in love with him. That is the missing piece of the equation, the irrational number that makes the rest make sense.

Of course Steve will throw everything he has into retrieving his lover. Love destroys your capacity to think. The Winter Soldier has seen innocents throw themselves into his sights to protect the ones they love, even though a bullet can pass through two people.

This, at least, is something simple enough for him to understand.

Before Steve can withdraw completely, Bucky is in his space, entwining with him. It does not come naturally, but neither is it quite as awkward as he feared it might be. He sits up and leans in, right arm slipping smoothly around Steve’s waist. If he tilts his head up _just so_ , he can settle himself against Steve’s broad chest until his mouth and Steve’s are nearly touching, a clear invitation. He can’t remember how they used to fit together, but Steve can have Bucky, if he wants him. It costs him nothing to offer this – it’s just a body, and this is a kinder use of it than HYDRA made. He’d rather be someone else’s memory than someone else’s gun.

Steve doesn’t close the gap between them. For painfully long seconds, the two of them are in each other’s space – Bucky’s body itches to do something to break the standoff he’s put himself in but he’s not sure what, the only form of touch he can recall is violence, but Steve _won’t move_.

“Who are you right now?” asks Rogers, and Bucky doesn’t understand why the question is even relevant.

Bucky doesn’t want to talk. He just wants Steve to close that last bit of distance, to accept control. Bucky’s not good at talking, but he’s damn good at taking orders. “I don’t know what to do, Steve, you’re gonna have to help me out here,” he prompts gently, hoping that will stir something, _anything_. He’s made his move now and he can’t retreat gracefully; the only way forward is to double down. He strokes his right hand down Steve’s back, the way that he has seen others do, in comfort and affection, and Steve arches a little into the touch but he _still doesn’t – damn him –_

“I can’t, Buck. It wouldn’t be right. Not when you’re like this.” His voice is so gentle, but something like panic is rising in Bucky’s chest now, threatening to hit him like a tidal wave. His breath catches in his throat and he presses himself closer into Steve, and Steve’s arms finally, _finally_ go around him –

(fumbling nights on a floor strewn with couch cushions, neither of the two of them know entirely what they’re doing but Jesus, every touch is sweet as pie)

(he’s going overseas tomorrow and Steve’s asked Bucky to fuck him properly for the first time, the lean little body under him is too tense and Bucky’s not sure whether Steve’s scared that it’ll hurt or scared that the first time will be the only time, but either way he strokes every inch of that soft pale skin until Steve goes languid and pliant under his hands)

(his body feels wrong after the shit that HYDRA pumped into his veins and all he wants is to sink himself into Steve until he can’t feel the wrongness through the afterglow, and even if Steve’s weird and huge he still arches his back like a happy cat when Bucky curls two fingers inside him)

-it’s too much, it’s too much, and Bucky’s shoulders are shaking, his hands pressed over his face. Steve’s arms tighten around him, he’s saying words but Bucky barely hears them. Distantly, he can hear himself gasping tiny pained noises into the solid bulk of Steve’s chest, and that too is unforgivable weakness that Steve continues to forgive. The flood of memories hit like a sledgehammer and it _hurts_. It’s like muscle memory – like picking up a sniper rifle and remembering that he knows exactly how to use it – except that those memories aren’t paired with this much baggage, they don’t come with the breathtakingly intimate knowledge that he used to be _a person who felt these things_ that are too big for his battered heart to encompass.

“Bucky? Talk to me, c’mon. Tell me what’s going in on your head,” Steve murmurs, and those words finally do get through, and Bucky takes a shaking breath and retrieves some outward semblance of control.

“It’s just a body,” he says out loud, hoping to make it true. If it’s only sex, he can handle only sex. He has stripped down obediently, opened his mouth obediently, let strangers touch and examine him obediently before, in harsher and more clinical contexts. It’s not as though Steve would make it unpleasant for him - and if Steve would just _take it_ , it would start to pay down the incalculable debt that Bucky owes. It’s just a body, a weapon, something that doesn’t belong to him and he can’t be bothered to lay claim to.

It’s the other part he can’t handle, the rush of want that leaves a clawing ache inside him. He can’t endure the sudden awareness of the gaping holes blown straight through his mind; it’s like a missing limb he forgot he had, numb with shock initially, and now that the awareness has hit him he can’t seem to clamp it down and ignore the pain anymore. He’d give anything to have his ignorance back.

“Oh, _Buck_ ,” breathes Steve, and tries to pull him closer into that comforting embrace that threatens to drown him.

The Winter Soldier pulls away.


End file.
